Infineon Chipset May Be Cause of IPhone 3G Issues

JagsLive sends along a CNet blog piece about a plausible theory to explain the iPhone 3G connection problems many users have experienced. Apple has not acknowledged any such problems. "Richard Windsor of Nomura published a research note... Tuesday singling out the iPhone 3G's chipset, made by Infineon, as the probable culprit for the reception problems we reported on Monday. The dropped calls, service interruptions, and abrupt network switches experienced by iPhone 3G users reminded Windsor of similar complaints five years ago, when 3G phones were first launched in Europe. 'We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain that Infineon is the 3G supplier,' Windsor wrote. 'This is not surprising as the Infineon 3G chipset solution has never really been tested in the hands of users. Some people will not experience these problems as it is only in areas where the radio signal weakens that the immaturity of the stack really shows.'"

Comments

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap testing is the cause of iPhone 3G issues. There are always issues before a product is released. The testing is supposed to find them. Something as obvious as this issue indicates that Apple didn't give a shit about testing.

Re:No.

[Darkness404]

...And why would they? Not only do you have a devoted Mac rumors bunch of people who will blog about a suspicious scratch on someone's iPhone, but you have the fanboys who if Apple markets iCrap they will buy 10 of them, and then 5 more when the price drops. Not to mention the fact that Apple is half-way open source and Unix based it keeps the tech guys buying it. Really, Apple can't even test an iPhone outside of a secret underground lab without it being leaked. Take that plus the fanboys and you have a company that can't and has little need to do testing.

Re:No.

[paanta]

No, the problem is that the fan base is insane and expectations are through the roof. If two blackberries in a million are faulty, it'll never make it onto slashdot. The two account execs who own them just don't care about the product enough to bitch. If two iPhones in a million show up with some hairline cracks on them, all of a sudden it's on Consumerist and MacRumors and every other tech website.

Sorry, but all products have flaws. You're delusional if you think that even 1% of companies are able to find all the bugs in their product before it makes it out the door. Even my f-ing Honda has had recalls.

I think the goal is consumer satisfaction, and Apple has consistently proven themselves capable in delivering a product that people love. The problem is that people love it so very, very much that they're willing to spend 30 hours posting about perceived slowness in the interface or perceived slowness in download speeds. Ultimately, no one is producing a product like the iPhone that surpasses the iPhone's user experience, and that counts for a lot.

Re:No.

[PopeRatzo]

If I buy a $10k Toyota Yaris and the tires fall off, I pretty much figured that was bound to happen.

What we have here are consumers behaving like battered wives. This joker accepts that ten thousand dollars is not enough to expect the most basic utility of a product. There are those who would criticize another consumer for complaining about getting an iPhone (or Yaris, or Xbox, or iPod, or MacBook, or...) that is a lemon. That is how badly misused they have been by our consumerist system. When we buy a product and it doesn't work, we should blame ourselves for not having spent enough money, or, get this one, for expecting too much.

No wonder corporations are having such an easy time replacing government in sovereign nations. Consumers don't even have enough self-respect to expect the most basic value from a product (or service). This has got to be related to the reason people vote Republican, even faced with incontrovertible evidence that it is against their own best interests.

I don't know about you, but this seems like a pretty shitty way to live. If the public were my sister, and her husband were to treat her the way the corporate culture treats consumers, I would tell her to divorce the bastard, or perhaps poison his coffee.

Re:No.

[Nefarious Wheel]

I worked for Apple in Cupertino during the Apple ][ / Apple /// days. The transition happened then.

Woz was a genuine engineer, and in his spec all Apple ]['s were burned in over 4 days in a hot room (50 degrees C) before they were packaged and shipped to the stores. The ]['s were very well known for reliability, which along with excellent packaging (yep, not all Jobs' competence is Reality Distortion Field) very few were returned for any sort of quality issue.

The Apple /// was a slightly different issue -- there was a problem with a clock chip supplier that worked as an object lesson that you can outsource a lot of things, but responsibilty (if not actual testing) can't be one of them.

And due to pressures of IBM's release of the flawed but powerfully marketed brand-new 8086 based PCat that point, the first real competition in the business world put pressures on Apple that it hadn't encountered before, thus a decision to release what they had in bulk to gain market share and risk returns overrode the impulse to limit supply by running them through that hot room first. This was the first disjunct and marketing lesson (see Apple and "Black Friday" and "duck quack synthesizer" if you can find the reference) for a company that was learning about how to go from company to corporation in one huge lump. Apple grew from $0.5M to $0.5B in gross sales that year, in their defense, and that's a huge amount of change to absorb.

Money wasn't really a problem, learning to land the fish was.

Imagine -- if you have a job that moves dirt 1/2 ton at a time, you're fine buying a half-ton pickup to move it. You can even scale that up a few times. But if you're suddenly faced with moving a million tons of dirt, you have to find a more complex solution than simply buying a half-million trucks. Everything Apple suffered during that phase was a result of the huge success of the Apple ][. That kind of scale didn't bother IBM, but we had trouble finding places to put people and other concerns of gearing up.

From my iphone 3G

[Frion]

I have no idea what connection issues they are tal

that's ok

[Colin Smith]

I guess some of us will never learn.

Not your fault, it's genetic.

 

Re:that's ok

[autocracy]

Now I wont be able to sleep.

That's ok, that's genetic too.

Who the hell is Richard Windsor...

[calstraycat]

...and what qualifications does he possess to comment on the possible cause of the alleged iPhone reception issues?

Seriously. This story is being widely distributed, but I have yet to see anyone ask about his credentials. Is he an electrical engineer with expertise in the design of cellular technology?

As far as I can tell, he's some financial analyst. So why would anyone consider him a credible source? Since when are the speculations of a financial analyst regarding the rather esoteric realm of RF engineering considered valid.

Am I missing something? Does someone know about his background?

Re:It's the antenna

[Anonymous Coward]

battery life? As far as I know the iPhone pretty much beats all other 3G phones on battery life (whoops, scratch that. 3 Blackberrys beat the iPhone by a couple minutes.)

goddammit

[Profane MuthaFucka]

can you iPhone people just ATH and drive?

Why is this a problem?

[ForestGrump]

AT&T has the best network around - More bars in more places. So this flaw should never be visible to the end user...unless AT&T has been lying to me.

Grump